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Gives new meaning to "Identity Crisis"
pianotm- 05/24/2017 06:45 AM
- 898 views
Name: The Seventh Door
Developers: sriden, Creation, trotter, Amalrich Von Monesser, Roi of the Suisse (I almost wrote that as Roi de le Suisse), Criket, AlterEgo, mapache, Zeus81, and Kisth
Story: A noir, cyberpunk adventure featuring mind control and body snatching. You control Julian(?...I let you find out), and Detective Zikaz. Julian is trying to piece together his memories while Zikaz is investigating the murder of a woman, neither realizing they're trying to solve the same mystery. Julian is being chased by some dangerous people while Zikaz slowly realizes that the killers he's seeking are messing with his mind. Got all four endings! Dev made it easy!
Cherries, you say! *ahem* Is that what you call it?
Writing: Fast-paced and hard-boiled from start to finish. The writer never loses the focus of the story and keeps the player mostly on the straight and narrow. A few of the cutscenes are unfortunately way too long and crammed with excessive and unnecessary exposition. These can get irritating as they last for several minutes. Some take forever getting to the point while others immediately get to the point and then spend useless minutes dissecting it. Much of the exposition could have been significantly truncated without losing necessary information, and more of it still could have been dispersed throughout the game so that the cutscene interruptions weren't nearly as long and a couple of these really drag on and on and on, particularly the ending which insists on revisiting every single relevant scene in the game you just played. Unless you've got a triple A budget for top notch CGI, it would probably be a good idea to reduce the cutscenes...significantly.
"And there it was, an old floppy disk, like the ones we used to play with when we were little kids. I knew then
and there I was probably dealing with the worst scum since the dried bacon grease in my skillet: dialup.
After all this time, it was just waiting for HD to slip up."
Gameplay: Absolutely amazing. Much of the game is point and click, and enemy avoidance, but a significant portion of it is mind control. The main character leaves his body, walks as a spirit to another body, takes control and then you can see into their memories, take absolute control of their bodies, erase their memories or force them to commit suicide. It's a game mechanic I've never played with before, and it was used to really neat effect here. There are a couple of mini-games that don't work quite as well, particularly the police car escape.
So...I've managed to get away from the police and the hitmen chasing me. Obviously, the best way to make
my getaway is driving at high speed on the wrong side of the road!!!
This mini-game was really obnoxious. Once you figure it out, it's easy enough, but it's really frustrating until then. The big problem is the instant you see the vehicles, you've got barely a fraction of a second to move out of the way. It's nearly impossible if you're not hugging the lines.
Graphics: Very nice, all custom, made by the devs. The mapping is excellent. You don't even realize you're playing on RPG Maker XP. It's not perfect though. All of the art style is fine, but the hand drawn scenes (and one hand drawn map) clash badly with overall style of the game. Like the stolen police car screen cap above. Does it look like it even remotely fits in a game that the previous two screen caps are from? Now, true, if it's just an animated cutscene, that's fine. You could get away with that, but bear in mind that that screen cap is of actual gameplay, and that there's another map (of a playground) done in that style. To add to it, the actual cutscenes where you learn the actual stories are drawn in yet another style. That style actually fits the game. The police car scene and the playground map, while good art on their own, just clash really badly with the rest of the game. It might not seem like a bad idea at the time, but it's things like that that take a player out of the narrative. You're playing a hard-boiled detective story set thirty years in the future with cyberpunk deco-noir graphics, and then suddenly you're playing a cartoony driving game. This is an excellent game, but stuff like this really stands out.
Music: Music is fantastic. I didn't write them all down, but several of the devs, including sriden, Creation, and Roi of the Suisse were involved in writing the score, hard electronica/trance/techno score that seems heavily inspired by scores like Parasite Eve.
Conclusion: If you like sci-fi, suspense, cyberpunk, mystery, and thriller, you're really going to enjoy this game. Highly recommended. I know this game has gotten a little attention on other sites, but come on. Why hasn't anyone really noticed it here?
Developers: sriden, Creation, trotter, Amalrich Von Monesser, Roi of the Suisse (I almost wrote that as Roi de le Suisse), Criket, AlterEgo, mapache, Zeus81, and Kisth
Story: A noir, cyberpunk adventure featuring mind control and body snatching. You control Julian(?...I let you find out), and Detective Zikaz. Julian is trying to piece together his memories while Zikaz is investigating the murder of a woman, neither realizing they're trying to solve the same mystery. Julian is being chased by some dangerous people while Zikaz slowly realizes that the killers he's seeking are messing with his mind. Got all four endings! Dev made it easy!
Cherries, you say! *ahem* Is that what you call it?
Writing: Fast-paced and hard-boiled from start to finish. The writer never loses the focus of the story and keeps the player mostly on the straight and narrow. A few of the cutscenes are unfortunately way too long and crammed with excessive and unnecessary exposition. These can get irritating as they last for several minutes. Some take forever getting to the point while others immediately get to the point and then spend useless minutes dissecting it. Much of the exposition could have been significantly truncated without losing necessary information, and more of it still could have been dispersed throughout the game so that the cutscene interruptions weren't nearly as long and a couple of these really drag on and on and on, particularly the ending which insists on revisiting every single relevant scene in the game you just played. Unless you've got a triple A budget for top notch CGI, it would probably be a good idea to reduce the cutscenes...significantly.
"And there it was, an old floppy disk, like the ones we used to play with when we were little kids. I knew then
and there I was probably dealing with the worst scum since the dried bacon grease in my skillet: dialup.
After all this time, it was just waiting for HD to slip up."
Gameplay: Absolutely amazing. Much of the game is point and click, and enemy avoidance, but a significant portion of it is mind control. The main character leaves his body, walks as a spirit to another body, takes control and then you can see into their memories, take absolute control of their bodies, erase their memories or force them to commit suicide. It's a game mechanic I've never played with before, and it was used to really neat effect here. There are a couple of mini-games that don't work quite as well, particularly the police car escape.
So...I've managed to get away from the police and the hitmen chasing me. Obviously, the best way to make
my getaway is driving at high speed on the wrong side of the road!!!
This mini-game was really obnoxious. Once you figure it out, it's easy enough, but it's really frustrating until then. The big problem is the instant you see the vehicles, you've got barely a fraction of a second to move out of the way. It's nearly impossible if you're not hugging the lines.
Graphics: Very nice, all custom, made by the devs. The mapping is excellent. You don't even realize you're playing on RPG Maker XP. It's not perfect though. All of the art style is fine, but the hand drawn scenes (and one hand drawn map) clash badly with overall style of the game. Like the stolen police car screen cap above. Does it look like it even remotely fits in a game that the previous two screen caps are from? Now, true, if it's just an animated cutscene, that's fine. You could get away with that, but bear in mind that that screen cap is of actual gameplay, and that there's another map (of a playground) done in that style. To add to it, the actual cutscenes where you learn the actual stories are drawn in yet another style. That style actually fits the game. The police car scene and the playground map, while good art on their own, just clash really badly with the rest of the game. It might not seem like a bad idea at the time, but it's things like that that take a player out of the narrative. You're playing a hard-boiled detective story set thirty years in the future with cyberpunk deco-noir graphics, and then suddenly you're playing a cartoony driving game. This is an excellent game, but stuff like this really stands out.
Music: Music is fantastic. I didn't write them all down, but several of the devs, including sriden, Creation, and Roi of the Suisse were involved in writing the score, hard electronica/trance/techno score that seems heavily inspired by scores like Parasite Eve.
Conclusion: If you like sci-fi, suspense, cyberpunk, mystery, and thriller, you're really going to enjoy this game. Highly recommended. I know this game has gotten a little attention on other sites, but come on. Why hasn't anyone really noticed it here?
